f her own
people, deeply mortgaged, was about to pass from her forever. Much
that was humbling had fallen to her in life, but nothing as sore as
this final disaster. At length she rose, took a lighted candle from
the table, and walked slowly around the great library room. The
sombre bindings of the books her childhood knew called back dim
recollections. The great china bowls, the tall silver tankards, the
shining sconces, and above, all the Stuart portraits or the Copleys of
the men who shone in Colonial days and helped to make a more than
imperial nation, each and all disturbed her as she gazed. At last, she
returned to the fireside, sat down and began anew her unfinished task.
With hasty hands she tumbled over the letters, and at length came upon
a package tied with a faded ribbon; one of those thin orange-colored
silk bands with which cigars are tied in bundles. She threw it aside
with a quick movement of disdain, and opened the case of a miniature,
slowly, and with deliberate care. A letter fell on to her lap as she
bent over the portrait of a young man. The day, the time, the need to
dispose of accumulated letters, had brought her to this which she
meant to be a final settlement of one of life's grim accounts. For
awhile, she steadily regarded the relics of happier hours. Then,
throwing herself back in her chair, she cried aloud, "How long I
hoped; how hopeless was my hope, and he said, he said, I was cruel and
hard. That I loved him no more. Oh! that was a lie! a bitter lie! But
a sot, a sot, and my children to grow up and see what I saw, and learn
to bear what I have borne. No! no! a thousand times no! I chose
between two duties, and I was right. I was the man of the two, and I
sent him away--forever. He said,--yes, I was right, but, my God! how
cruel is life! I would never have gone, never! never! There!" she
exclaimed, and threw back the miniature into the basket, closing it
with violence, as she did so, as one may shut an unpleasant book read
and done with.

For a moment, and with firmer face, she considered the letter, reading
scraps of it aloud, as if testing her resolution to make an end of it
all. "Hard, was I? Yes. Would I had been sooner hard. My children
would have been better off. 'I went because you bid me.' Yes I did.
Will he ever know what that cost me? 'I shall never come again until
you bid me come.' Not in this world then?" she cried. "O Hugh! Hugh!"
And in a passion of tears that told of a too